


white light in your arms tonight

by swingingparty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Banter, Gen, Good End, Near Death Experiences, Sibling Bonding, Suicide Missions, discussions of jesus in the face of certain death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingingparty/pseuds/swingingparty
Summary: Dave’s never been one for nihilism, but if there’s ever a point to start, he figures literal minutes before the total and obsolete end of his life as he knows is probably it. Not like there’s any point in giving a shit about things that matter, now, right? Forget flogging it, it’d just be taking the poor dead horse and throwing it down a few flights of stairs and then running it over with a semi-truck for good measure. So to speak.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Dave Strider
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	white light in your arms tonight

**Author's Note:**

> no thoughts head empty just the fact that dave was canonically willing to get himself killed for good just so rose wouldn’t have to die alone

The end of the known universe is, helpfully enough, freezing as balls.

Of course it is, honestly; Dave’s not sure what else he was expecting. Clearly, whoever is in charge of this assfuck of a universe has decided that, nah, the emotional strain of him sitting on some sacrificial slab actively watching as the remaining few minutes of his life tick slowly by, powerless to do anything but literally just twiddle this thumbs is not enough; he also has to contract fucking hypothermia out here. Go figure.

Dave’s actually not sure whether or not hypothermia is still on the table of things that could happen to him. The normal rules of the somewhat-normal-if-you-squint life he used to live have long since been obliterated into a million tiny pieces of absolutely nothing, leaving him with very little frame of reference as to what the fuck can even happen to him anymore. End of the world? Sure. Entire race of really bitchy anthropomorphic grey-skinned trolls? Why not? Having one of his best friends turn out to be his actual sister related via ectobiology and paradoxes and some other shit no one has really bothered to walk him through yet? Hell yeah, man. Hypothermia? Who the fuck knows.

Rose does, probably. Dave has, recently, been a little aggressively introduced to the full breadth of all that Rose Lalonde, the paradoxical sibling in question—which honestly surprises him way less than it should when he thinks about it—knows. It’s including, but not limited to pretty much fucking anything there is to ever know about this weird new world and the Game and the trolls and the freaky Elder Gods she spent a few days getting all buddy-buddy with before promptly dying and everything in between. It’s kinda scary, honestly; Dave feels like if he was clued in to even, like, a fifth of all the shit in her head right now, his own brain would deep-fry itself and then short circuit like a phone dropped in a bathtub. Weird metaphor, but whatever; point is, she’s kind of omniscient, now, sort of. Maybe, like, half omniscient, or three-quarters. She definitely would know if he can get hypothermia out here, though, and that’s all that matters anymore right now.

Dave’s never been one for nihilism, but if there’s ever a point to start, he figures literal minutes before the total and obsolete end of his life as he knows is probably it. Not like there’s any point in giving a shit about things that matter, now, right? Forget flogging it, it’d just be taking the poor dead horse and throwing it down a few flights of stairs and then running it over with a semi-truck for good measure. So to speak.

“It’s amazing how you don’t even have to be speaking out loud for me to know your thought process has become more devolved than cyanobacteria,” Rose says suddenly, and just like that, Dave’s train of thought reaches its end, screeching to a halt in the middle of the track. Whatever. It was a shitty and stupid train anyways.

God, it’s _cold_. Dave grits his teeth against a shiver running down his spine and lets out a tiny snort. “Fuck even is cyanobacteria?”

Beside him, Rose sighs, almost imperceptibly. The wind around them—Dave’s pretty certain one of the rules of space is that wind is, like, not allowed, but hey, maybe the Furthest Rings are special or something—has started to pick up, and her hair is blown over that stupid purple headband she still somehow has on, falling into her face. In the light from the bomb—The Tumor, rather, because evening here needs a stupid and pretentious name, apparently—it glows a faint mixture of off-red and pale blue. Like a cop car siren.

Dave thinks about pointing this out, cracking some joke comparing the incessant way in which she delivers all information to a siren sounding on repeat, but decides against it. He’s feeling strangely uncomedic right now, and something tells him Rose’s head is on a similar plane.

“I don’t even know,” she says, back to the bacteria. “Something I read in a book. Back on Earth.”

The way she says Earth is funny, mouth twisting around the word like the edges of it are sharp or something, about to slice her gums up if she’s not careful. Dave gets it, though; just thinking about the planet he had called home for thirteen years and how it and everyone on it doesn’t exist anymore makes his stomach clench painfully.

But, hey, what can you do, really? It’s not like he’ll be around for much longer to still give a shit, anyways.

In front of then, the timer hits ten minutes. The numbers are angry, loud, standing out bright-blue against the endlessly black backdrop. He blinks and still sees them, seared into the backs of his eyelids like a tattoo, inescapable.

Ah, mortality. What a motherfucker.

Dave swallows back what feels like a mouthful of glass. He’d told himself, somewhere between waking up on Derse and catching up with Rose, that he was not going to care about this. That he was going to die, sure, fine, whatever, but he was not going to get stupid and sappy and emotional over it. Rose had been frustratingly cryptic about everything as usual, but even he had been able to discern thay this was necessary. Like capital-N type necessary, fate of all known universes riding on it type necessary, literal matter of life and death type necessary, all that shit. Fuck Earth getting destroyed as they know it; Rose doesn’t have to say it so plainly for Dave to get that not setting off The Tumor will result in their entire universe going up in metaphorical flames. And the trolls’ one, too.

So this has to happen. They have to do this and dying in the process is just a sucky side effect. Sucky, but necessary. So there’s no point in caring.

Plus, he basically begged to be here, so turning tail and getting scared last-minute would be a major dick move, especially to Rose, who also doesn’t have to say anything so plainly for Dave to get that she really, really doesn’t want him here right now. Or maybe she really, really does, and is pissed at herself because of it. Dave’s still working out the kinks of the whole sibling-mind-reading schtick, which kinda sucks, because it’s not like he has endless expanses of time to hone in his skills now.

Whatever. Thinking about that too much makes his stomach hurt more, so he pushes those thoughts aside, and focuses on the cold. Maybe he should stop silently bitching about the whole hypothermia thing; it’s a nice distraction, if nothing else.

“Ten minutes,” he says aloud like a fucking idiot, like Rose doesn’t have two perfectly functioning eyes that can’t see the time for herself, like she—or himself, too, if he’s being honest—need a reminder on just how brief a timeframe they’re operating within now. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“What for?” Rose’s eyes glow blue and red. Her voice sounds a little far away, and Dave’s not sure if that’s just because of the emptiness around them, or something entirely different.

“Mentioning that. You know, kinda unnecessary.”

“Oh.” She frowns, still staring at The Tumor. “It’s fine. No sense in dodging the topic, really.”

She’s right, of course, but the whole acknowledging thing kind of crashes his bomb-ass What’s Wrong Nothing’s Wrong This Is All Fine And And Cool And Normal party.

“Dave,” Rose says, and he’ll be ducked if that’s actual hesitation in her voice; god, there really is a first time for everything, huh?

“‘Sup, Lalonde.”

He risks another side-eye at her—something about facing her full on feels wrong, like he’s looking into the sun they’re about to throw their lives away trying to destroy; maybe it just makes it feel too real—and sees her frown deepen, stare vacant and clouded. She chews her lip—it looks like it’s bleeding, he realizes—for a second longer, before—

“I’m sorry.”

Dave gets an odd sensation that the aforementioned party is about to get the cops called on it, so to speak, but presses her anyways.

“For what?”

“Bringing you here.”

Ah, yep. He can distinctly hear metaphorical sirens in the metaphorical distance. Well. It was nice while it lasted.

“I asked to come,” he reminds her, because he did, several times to varying degrees of insistency. “And you still said no. And I came regardless. You didn’t really bring me here so much as—I dunno. Let me come, I guess.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she asks, and Dave can see her mouth twisting again. “Do the niceties even matter if I still facilitated it regardless?” She shakes her head, wind still buffeting her hair. “I should’ve knocked you out again.”

“No, you really fucking shouldn’t have,” Dave says, because if he’s being honest this situation is starting to suck exponentially more by the second and he cannot—will not let himself—imagine how he would be feeling if there was no one at his side to watch the numbers tick to zero with him. He cannot imagine it, and he does not want to imagine Rose in that situation, either.

“You know I should have.”

Dave shakes his head, something hard starting to take shape in the back of his throat and oh, _fuck_ , he really does not have time for that. “You would’ve died.”

“I’m going to die anyways, Dave.”

“You would’ve died alone.”

He can sense her tensing up at that, finally losing the staring match she’s had going on with the bomb to end all bombs to swing her gaze around to fix on him. Dave can feel it burning twin holes in the side of his head, and he keeps himself facing forward, out to the abyss, because there’s still time left on the clock, because it’s too early to get too sad, because he’s Dave fucking Strider and this isn’t supposed to be a big deal.

He’s Dave fucking Strider and there is no way on Earth or Derse or Alternia or wherever the fuck they are now that he’s going to start crying.

“That doesn’t matter,” she says, still staring at him in a way that he is totally not giving a shit about because it’s making both his stomach and his chest hurt now. “Dave—”

“It does to me,” he cuts in. His sunglasses feel inexplicably heavy on the bridge of his nose all of a sudden, and he has the weird urge to take them off for the first time in, like, months. “Just—I—”

Oh, what the hell. He’s dying anyways.

“Listen,” Dave tells The Tumor, still avoiding even looking in the direction of Rose like the fucking plague—could he get the plague out here? He should ask her that, too—keeping his voice rigidly monotone. “You—look, I know you’re up your own ass about everything, really. And it’s annoying as hell, don’t get me wrong.”

“Touching,” she says, absolutely no bite to her voice, not even in the slightest.

Dave swallows. Motherfucker. “But, look. This—stupid Game, or whatever, it’s fucked, right? Just—everything about it is fucked and it’s designed to be shitty and violent and, man, this sucks. That we’ve come this far only for it to end in a flashbang of—whatever the fuck suns are made out of, I guess. Like, what’s about to go down will be super heroic and sexy and maybe I’ll even get that jumped-up dickwad Karkat to, like, shed some freaky alien tears over my disintegrated body, or something, but it’s still gonna be fucked. We’re still gonna, like, kick the bucket, man, and I just—” He swallows again. “I thought me being here, it would—I don’t know. Help. I just didn’t want you to die alone. That’s not fair. Not after everything else you’ve had to deal with.”

He feels Rose’s gaze snap away. The silence that follows is long and heavy and somehow deafeningly loud.

“God,” she mutters after a point. Her voice sounds thick. “ _Fuck_.”

“Language,” Dave remonstrates, heart not even close to being in it. Honestly, his heart feels sort of it’s been blown to pieces already. Funny.

“Says you.”

“Yeah. That’s the joke, Lalonde.” Dave risks another glance at her, certain she’s back to staring into space, and finds himself locking eyes with her before he can do anything about it. Fuck. Now he’s pretty sure he can’t look anywhere but her, even if. his life depended on it.

“Advanced comedy,” he says, and if sounds weak even to his own ears.

Rose’s smile doesn’t even come close to meeting her eyes, which are big and wide and still the same grey-violet color they’ve always been and maybe a little watery but, hey, Dave’s not one to judge. Unless its himself, because _c’mon_ , _man_ , save the waterworks for some other shit.

Maybe that line of thinking would be more effective if there was going to be other shit to save it for. Oh, well. Whatever.

“I’m still sorry,” she says, voice way too soft and way too sad and, ow, his eyes are starting to burn. Fucking space air, man. “You don’t deserve this.”

“And you do?”

She frowns. Dave frowns back.

“I ain’t feeding into your weird pseudo-suicidal god complex, Lalonde,” he says. “You don’t. None of us do.”

“It’s—”

“Necessary, yeah. Whatever. But this—this isn’t your fucking cross to bear all by yourself. Can’t have you stepping on Jesus’s toes like that.” Dave forces his face into the semblance of a grin. “Respect the holy sandals, man.”

She smiled back, a little shakily. Dave realizes that this is the first time he’s ever even entertained the notion of Rose Lalonde crying, much seen it happen with his own two eyes right in front of him. That always seemed like something she wasn’t programmed to do. Psychoanalyze and knit and write and snark, sure. Blow up planets, apparently so. But cry?

It occurs to him that that’s kind of a dickheaded thing to hint—of course you friends have emotions, numbnuts—but he figures, somewhat half-heartedly, that is a little late in the game for turning over a new leaf. It also occurs to him, in a slow, somewhat sickening wave, that it’s the last time he’ll see something like that, too. It’s the last time he’ll see her. And everything else.

_Fuck_. Space air again.

“I don’t think the sandals were the holy part, Dave,” she says, voice a weird mixture of familiarly exasperated and achingly fond.

“Dude, they totally were. Imagine how much cash they’d go for on Ebay or some shit.”

“Good to know that’s you’re measure of sanctimony. How much money strangers on the internet are willing to fork over.”

In front of then, the timer beeps. Five minutes.

Dave feels sick, all of a sudden. He watches as Rose’s eyes widen, then squeeze shut for a moment. When she opens them, they’re glassy.

“You know,” she says, a little faintly. “For all my childhood suicidal ideation—”

“You say that like it’s a normal thing.”

“You try living with my mother,” she says, and there’s a bitterness to her words, a total lack of irony that Dave wants to ask about, that he should’ve asked about months and months and months ago, really. Time is of essence, though.

Maybe in another life. He almost smiles at that.

“I never thought I would willingly walk myself to my own death, though,” Rose carries on. Her gaze sweeps out across the vast reaches of space before them, lips pursing. “I rather feel conflicted about it now. There is—there is much I find myself wishing I could have done, despite it all.”

Dave thinks about John and Jade. About Houston, about the the katanas in the fridge and the puppets on the counter. About the remaining pieces of the life he once had, fast fading from his mind. About LOHAC. About the sword in his Bro’s chest, the blood on his stupid sunglasses, the glassy sheen over his eyes behind them. About Terezi’s shitty comics, and how he didn’t say goodbye to her.

About Rose, sister, next to him, a speck of purple and white against the dark behind her. About the fear, raw and serrated, in her eyes. About the _I’m_ _sorry,_ repeated over and over and over again i’m gone bake of his head, because, really, he’s the one who should be sorry, letting her get into this in the first place. Letting her think this was some sort of fucked-up destiny she deserved to fulfill, or whatever.

“Yeah,” he says, blinking. “Me too.”

Another beep. Two minutes.

“Any earth-shattering confessions?” Dave asks. “Now’s the time.”

“I’m gay?”

“I already knew that.”

She snorts. Then, jerkily, reaches out and grabs his hand, interlocking their fingers. Her hands are smaller than expected, fingers bony, raised scars on her knuckles. Her palm is warm. He can feel her shaking.

Oh, fuck it. He reaches up and tugs off his sunglasses, carefully stowing then in the pocket of his weird purple pajamas—because they are John’s gift, after all, and he’s just now discovering how much of a shit-ton that actually means to him—and blinks hard again. Rose looks at him, eyebrows raised.

“Wow. You take ‘red is my favorite color’ to a whole new level,” she says, and it’s so fucking stupid; they’re about to die, and Rose is snarking his eye color.

“Funny,” he says.

One minute.

Blinks again.Rose’s hand tightens around his, her nails digging into his knuckles.

“Sorry,” she whispers, suddenly quiet, and he just squeezes her hand in response. There’s no point in telling her to shut up, now, anyways.

“You know,” Dave says, careful to keep his voice measured, agonizingly aware of the seconds counting down, down, down. “If there’s anyone I had to get blown to smithereens alongside, I’m kinda glad that it’s you.”

Her smile is shaky, eyes shining, blue and red all over again. “I quite find myself reciprocating that sentiment, Dave.”

Thirty seconds.

“Wait for me in the afterlife, yeah?” he asks and god, this is so stupid, this is so fucking stupid. His nose is burning and his throat hurts and he wants to go back in time, to knock Rose out with a fucking ball of yarn, to leave her on Derse, asleep, none the wiser. She shouldn’t be here. This is so stupid and she shouldn’t be here. “We gotta get up to some mad post-death antics. It’s on my bucket list.”

Ten seconds.

“Of course.” She squeezes his hand three times in quick succession. He’s not really sure why, or what it means, but it feels nice all the same. “Of course.”

_Three_.

Dave turns to face The Tumor, head on. Beside him. Rose does the same.

_Two_.

Well, fuck. Hopefully it won’t hurt.

_One_.

And then everything goes white, then red, then black. The last thing he feels are Rose’s fingers, still wrapped around his.

.:.

When Dave sees her next, they’re on the meteor with a handful of the trolls. She’s wearing orange and yellow, which is so baffling to see, considering the only colors Dave has ever seen her wear in the flesh is black, purple, or white. He sort of wants to crack a joke about her looking like a piece of candy corn, but something about the weird, strained expression on her face as she marches up to him, fists visibly balled, that makes hold his tongue.

“Made it,” he says instead, grinning. “Got a sick pajama update, too.”

She’s still looking at him like she doesn’t really believe he’s there, but her mouth twists into a wry smile all the same. “What’d I say about taking your favorite color to the next level?”

And then she’s wrapping him in a hug, the bridge of her nose pressed into his collar bone, his cheek resting on the crown of her head and, holy _fuck_ , Dave will use whatever new dope-ass post-incineration powers he’s been vested with to smite Karkat fucking Vantas off the face of this space rock if the troll so much as thinks about making some douchey comment about human sentimentality or touchy-feely-ness.

“That was unexpected,” Rose says into his chest.

Dave snorts into her hair. “Fucking say that again.”

She tightens her hold on him for a moment, and even though Dave knows they aren’t even close to being out of the woods, and all they have to guide them is some shitty, hand-drawn map, probably made by Karkat, the moron; even though he knows that, once they get out of this particular forest, there’s only gonna be another, like, twelve to work through; even though he knows the Game is still gonna try and beat the living shit out of them at every available opportunity for however long they have left; even though he knows death on either of their parts is still a terrifyingly real possibility, god powers be damned, Dave lets himself relax and breathe for a minute. Just a minute.

“I warned you about the universe-sized exploding suns, bro,” he says, and she laughs, loud and still a little shaky.

“I told you, dog.”

Yeah. Relax and breathe. Just for a minute. 


End file.
